


love can be frightening for sure

by molotovhappyhour



Series: The End of the Day [3]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, M/M, life is strange au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-21
Updated: 2016-02-21
Packaged: 2018-05-22 12:20:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6079122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/molotovhappyhour/pseuds/molotovhappyhour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Levi can only watch as Time itself tries to tear Eren into a million different pieces, as it tries to change him into something else. “I’ll always save you,” is what he’d said. Maybe it’s time for Levi to return the favour.</p>
            </blockquote>





	love can be frightening for sure

**Author's Note:**

> "where do u get all ur sweet titles ryssa"
> 
> check out "end of the day" by 1D

(“ _i dare you to kiss me._ ”)

“Kiss me,” Levi speaks softly, watching Eren’s face as he asks, gauging to see if this is okay. They’d kissed before—they’ve been kissing for a couple days now, _regularly_ , but stuff has... changed. Eren’s different. He stares at things that Levi can’t see, at futures that he’s never been to and probably never wants to. _Things_ are different now, and he has to respect that. And so he tells Eren to kiss him, because this way Eren can say no.

But Eren doesn’t say no, leans forward instead, and smiles softly and fondly—

(“ _i love you_ ,” Eren had whispered against his ear, not even two days before. A secret, safely kept.)

And his face contorts with a hiss and curls his body forward, pressing one of his palms to his nose with a vicious curse. Levi catches it only barely as he curls his arms around Eren’s trembling body, but it’s definitely there. A whispered _fuck_ , breathed out on something that could be a soft sob. It sounds _wet_.

“ _Eren_ ,” his name is a growl in his throat, clawing at his windpipe, “what did you _do?_ ”

He lifts his head and drops his palm, grinning through blood oozing from his nose. “I call this trick the _Mood-killer_.”

Levi _wants_ to shove him. Eren’s never been particularly funny when he does this, hiding behind miserable humour to pretend like he’s not hurting. But, instead of shoving him off the bed where he can laugh on the floor, Levi brings a hand to his cheek. He finds a tear there, smears it with his thumb, and waits for the smile to fall away from Eren’s lips like he knows it will.

(And it does. Eren’s never lasted long when Levi has stared him down.)

“What did you do?” Levi asks again, this time slowly, keeping his hand against Eren’s face.

“I couldn’t let the moment go,” the smile comes back, not as strong as before, and it shakes at the corners. Blood crawls toward his upper lip, hanging there for a moment before it falls onto Eren’s pants. The sun, trying its best to peek through the blinds and torn curtains as it dies against the horizon, turns the blood-trail orange, lights it on fire. “I couldn’t let the moment go, so I kept going back and kissing you, because you kept saying kiss me. I couldn’t let it go. It was only, like, thirty seconds each time. _Thirty seconds_. I—this shouldn’t’ve happened. I didn’t want to _kill_ the mood, I wanted to _keep_ it.”

Another tear meets the pad of Levi’s thumb. But Eren doesn’t stop talking.

“But I kill everything, Levi.” His eyes cloud over, a storm darkening the waters over the sea, and Levi feels his heart drop toward his stomach. “I kill everything. _I’m_ the Mood-killer. It’s me.”

(“ _i’m so sorry._ ” A photo of the two of them had fallen from between Eren’s fingers, two hours prior. His eyes had been overburdened with tears, falling freely down his cheeks, though Eren had simply stared at Levi as if he hadn’t noticed them. “ _levi, i’m so sorry, i couldn’t_ —“

He’d blinked. Levi had waited, poised on the edge of the bed, looking down at Eren for the first time in almost three years. Eren had never sounded so small.)

“You’re _not_ a mood killer,” Levi sighs, bringing Eren’s face close and tasting the copper of his blood when he inhales. “You just don’t _listen_ to me when I tell you that you can literally kiss me _whenever_ the fuck you want. I’ll always kiss you. Kissing you is what I look _forward_ to, during the day.”

Eren’s eyes are dull as they skate back and forth across Levi’s face, watching him speak. It’s disconcerting—and so he continues. He wonders when _he_ started this nervous-babbling bullshit. This has always been Eren’s talent.

“Since I can’t _smoke_ anymore,” Levi gives Eren a pointed glance and is rewarded when his lips twitch upward in a small smile, “I have to keep my mouth occupied somehow.” He drags his thumb—a little flakey with dried tears—over Eren’s lower lip. It comes away with blood. “Even when you’re being _gross_.”

Eren only stares at him, blood drying on his upper lip, coagulating in his Cupid’s bow. “What if I can’t always kiss you?”

(“ _i’ll always save you,_ ” is what had finally left Eren’s lips, whispered, tucked beneath the shadows that hadn’t yet begun to stretch across the floor. “ _don’t ask me not to. don’t ever ask me not to._ ”

He hadn’t spoken about... whatever-he’d-seen again.

They had left the photo on the floor.)

“Don’t be stupid. My lips won’t be kissed by anyone else.”

Eren blinks slowly, as if it’s too much effort to open them back up. He looks so _tired_. The shadows under his eyes threaten to overwhelm his face, spreading down his cheeks. Pink lines crawl toward the green of his irises, fresh and swollen from the tears his headache had brought. But a smile pulls at the corners of his mouth, and something glitters in his eyes.

It’s a lie—but at least he’s trying. Not everyone knows what a terrible liar he is.

“Aw, Levi, is that your way of saying you’d miss me if we couldn’t kiss anymore?”

Levi snorts, licking his clean thumb and rubbing at the dried blood, cleaning it away. It’s uncomfortable to see it there. He’s getting too used to it. It’s a stain on Eren’s face. He’s fucking _tired_ of these nosebleeds.

“It’s my way of _saying_ that you can _stop rewinding time_ just to get me to kiss you. I’ll _always_ kiss you.”

Eren laughs weakly, rubbing at the spit Levi had left behind beneath his nose. Jesus _Christ_ , when did Eren start looking so exhausted? Who the _fuck_ said Eren could just be burdened with all of this garbage when Levi wasn’t around? Who decided that it was Eren’s job to rewind time and—

(“ _i’ll always save you._ ”)

“Hey Levi?” The shadows at the end of the bed are reaching for his bedroom door. They’ve swallowed the photo by now.

“Hm?” He can feel fingers squeezing his throat when he watches Eren’s face. His eyes are looking somewhere past Levi’s head, toward his desk where all his school papers from the year before are still strewn around. His laptop sits there, open, the screen dark. But none of that matters, not really, because Eren isn’t seeing all that shit anyway. He’s watching something Levi never got to see, a future Eren had witnessed and changed, a future that shook him so deeply that his skin had gone from an earthen brown to white in the blink of an eye.

Levi doesn’t know what he’s seeing. And he doesn’t _like_ that.

“Don’t ask me not to save you.” Another slow blink. The struggle to open his eyes again is obvious, his lips twisting with the effort.

 _Why do you keep saying that?_ burns against his tongue like _coals_ , thick and tasting of sulfur. It hurts to swallow the words, aches to feel them crawl back down his throat. They sit beneath his lungs, cooking him from the inside out.

But he works his way around it, and when he speaks again his voice is even and no smoke comes out when he breathes.

“I think you should take a nap.” Incredulity flashes over Eren’s features, his nose wrinkling.

“Thanks, _mom_ , but I—“

“You look fucking exhausted.” Levi drags his knuckles gently up the side of his face, his heart quivering in his chest like a trapped bird when Eren leans into the touch absently. “Sleep for an hour and I’ll order pizza. We can watch shitty movies when you wake up.”

(Eren flinches when the says _movies_. But he doesn’t say _no_.)

“Extra cheese,” Eren says into his knuckles.

“Of course,” Levi leans forward to kiss his forehead before shoving him lightly against the mattress. “Who do you think you’re _speaking_ to? What. You think I’m gonna put blueberries on it, or something?”

Eren crawls under the covers, resting his head on the pillow Levi had used the night before. “I was just _checking_ ,” is mumbled against the pillowcase, decorated with faded stars. There’s a pause as he tucks the blankets under his chin. “But maybe it wouldn’t hurt to try the blueberries sometime.” Another pause. And then, a whisper, “will you come wake me up?”

Levi stands and the floorboards creak beneath his feet. They sound almost like a whimper. He reaches, pusheing his fingers through Eren’s hair and watches his eyes fall shut with a sigh.

And then he says, “of _course_ ,” a second time. “Who do you think you’re _speaking_ to?”

Eren’s soft laughter follows him out of the room until it’s cut off by the quiet click of the door being pulled shut behind him. The bird trapped inside his ribcage flutters nervously as he trots down the stairs, each one creaking just as his floorboards had.

He can’t see his own shadow for all the darkness downstairs until he turns on the light in the living room. There are photos still on the walls from five years ago. Him and Eren and his mother. Him and Eren and both their mothers. Him and Eren. Almost all of them don’t sit properly in their places anymore, their frames having been broken in the year that had followed his mother’s death, but it’s still comforting to see them as he walks to the sofa to drop down upon it.

The couch is the only thing in the house that doesn’t squeak when he sits.

(“ _i tried, levi._ ” Eren’s hands just wouldn’t stop _shaking_. What the fuck had he _seen_? “ _i’m so sorry? i’m so sorry._ ”)

Levi lifts his head from his hands when a phone virbates, not bothering to wonder when he’d moved to that position. It’s no fucking wonder, what with all the thoughts chasing themselves in circles inside his skull, wearing paths beneath their feet with all their running around.

The phone is Eren’s.

He reaches for it, turning it over and over in his hands. There are two texts text there: one from _Springertime_ and another from _Nerd Arlert_.

He swipes his thumb to the right.

(“ _the codes’s four-eight-three-five,_ ” he remembers Eren saying when he’d moved into the dorms with Levi’s help, flopped backwards against his mattress and huffing hair from his forehead. “ _tell jean i’ll see him tomorrow. we’re still unpacking_.”

Levi had just watched him, unable to stop thinking about how tall he’d gotten and how beautiful he’d looked, haloed by the fucking Sun when they’d reunited in front of the dorms only minutes prior, as if it had just figured out that Eren was the center of the solar system. The center of the _universe_.)

The line rings when Levi brings the phone to his ear, having ignored the message entirely to click on the call button. His pulse threatens to shriek beneath his skin, the bird having not taken the hint to calm the _fuck_ down and relax. There’s too much going on today—there’s just too much going on _period._

(They’ve still not made any headway in finding Isabel, and Eren’s trying to handle that on top of _everything_ else. Isabel and the oncoming storm, classes and time travel, Levi and nosebleeds, life and death.

He’s going to end up dead this way.)

“You could’ve just waited to reply, if you were busy,” says Eren’s friend Armin, huffing out a laugh. “You _never_ call unless you need notes. Do you need notes? I didn’t see you in trig today, so I guess I wouldn’t be surprised, but—“

“You’re Eren’s friend Armin, right?”

A pause. The rustling of papers. Homework? “Yeah, that’s me. You’re Eren’s Levi.”

The bird that his heart had been struggles for breath and now is _not_ the time. There will be other days where he can process the fact that Eren’s friends know about him. There will be _tons_ of other days, as long as Levi can figure out whatever is going on in Arcadia Bay before in turns Eren into someone else.

“Yeah,” Levi says against a wheeze. “That’s—yeah. I—do you know if Eren’s okay?”

A chair creaks in the background. A firefly blinks in the backyard, through the sliding door. “You see him more than I do. You’re the one with his _phone_.”

Levi’s grateful that Armin can’t see him flinch. “I mean—I was just wondering.”

Another pause and another squeaking of a chair. Papers rustle and Armin sighs into the phone.

“I don’t know how he’s been sleeping but he looks pretty shitty, don’t you think?” he finally says. “Maybe he’s been stressed about classes or something, or maybe he’s been freaked by Farlan’s display last Friday, or maybe he’s just going through a phase.” He hums and the phone distorts it, twisting it into a static parody. “But that’s not _really_ why you called.”

“No,” and this time Levi pauses, putting his words together. The sciences were something he’d understood _very_ well before he’d let school slip by him in favour of suffering instead, and he knows that skill could pay off now. He _also_ knows he could just ask Hanji—but they’re not so good with secrets, and the less people that know, the better. “I need you to tell me what you know about quantum physics. I can’t use the school library, and Google keeps giving me shit that doesn’t make sense or doesn’t source.”

There’s abrupt silence. No papers, no squeaking of a chair. And then, “Eren asked me that Friday night.”

“He’s trying to help me get back into school.” Levi’s always been better at lying than Eren has, especially off the cuff like this. They’ve been compliments of each other since they were born. Levi wonders what he'd done for the year of his life before Eren had come along. “I’m just trying to save him the trouble. He can’t do all the work for me.” The words scar the inside of his mouth the moment he says them.

(“ _i’ll always save you._ ”)

“I’ll forward you what I sent him.” The background noise returns and the tension in Levi’s gut loosens, just a little. The flames beneath his lungs, however, don’t go out. “Good luck with your academic pursuits, Eren’s Levi.”

“Thanks.” Another firefly blinks outside. And another. “Have a good night, Eren’s friend Armin.”

Laughter. More fireflies.

And Levi hangs up.

(Levi doesn’t feel like he needs saving. Sure, there had been the bathroom. And the train tracks. And the car in the junkyard. And that _fucking_ future that Eren won’t talk about from literally _today_. The one that had scared him shitless.

“ _i’ll always save you._ ”

Maybe it’s time Levi returned the favour. Even if it’s Time itself that Levi needs to protect him from.)


End file.
